"What time is it?"
"Six o'clock."
"Will we git there by half after nine?—th' trial's at ten."
"Yes."
Patsy sat down and looked at the wreck.
"Now, a man who could put such a woman off, in such a storm, at such an hour, and with a grief like that," said Patsy to himself, "would pasture a goat on his grandmother's grave."
When Patsy woke at two o'clock that afternoon, he picked up a noon edition of an all-day paper, and the very first word he read was "Not guilty." That was the heading of the police news.
"There was a pathetic scene in Judge Meyer's court this morning at the preliminary hearing of the case of Terrence Cassidy, charged with the murder of the old farmer at Spring Bank on Monday last. All efforts to draw a confession from Cassidy had failed, and the detectives had come to the conclusion that he was either very innocent or very guilty—there was no purgatory for Terrence; it was heaven or the hot place, according to the detectives. For once the detectives were right. Terrence was very innocent. It appears that the tramp who was killed on the Wabash last night made a confession to the trainmen, after being hit by the engine, to the effect that he had murdered the old farmer, and afterwards, at the point of an empty pistol, forced a young Irishman, whom he met upon the railroad track, to exchange clothes with him. That accounts for the blood stains upon Cassidy's coat, but, of course, nobody credited his story.
"The tramp's confession, however, was wired to the general manager of the Wabash by the conductor of the out-going train, together with a description of the tramp's clothes, which description tallies with that given of those garments worn by Cassidy.